


Get Out Alive

by ScreechTheMighty



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Character Death, Freeform, Gen, Groundhog Day AU, Inspired by tumblr conversations, Present Tense, Suicide mention, This fandom has ruined me, Tine Loops, torture mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-09
Updated: 2015-09-25
Packaged: 2018-04-19 23:53:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 8,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4765703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScreechTheMighty/pseuds/ScreechTheMighty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wakes up by the powder lakes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. begin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Primarybufferpanel (ArwenLune)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArwenLune/gifts).
  * Inspired by [So I Heard You Like Timeloops - the Fury Road Groundhog Day AU tumblrfic/headcanon collection](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4764635) by [bonehandledknife (ladywinter)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladywinter/pseuds/bonehandledknife), [bookwyrm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookwyrm/pseuds/bookwyrm), [Primarybufferpanel (ArwenLune)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArwenLune/pseuds/Primarybufferpanel). 



> So I read an INSANELY lengthy and fascinating and heart-breaking conversation ongoing on tumblr dot com about what a Mad Max Groundhog Day style AU would look like (there's a collection of all the thoughts [here on AO3](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4764635)), got inspired, scribbled down an outline in between customers, and wrote the first few chapters while on my break. This fandom has ruined me. Y'all are enablers. I love you.

He hears the cars coming before he sees them.

It's the same old grind, the same as what he hears every other day, but it still sets his heart pounding with fear. He throws himself in his car. He fangs it.

It's a pack of them, and they're smarter than the usual scavengers. He's driving as fast as he can, but he's boxed in. Cornered. Surrounded. Something  _explodes_ , and suddenly his car is flipping through the air, slamming him down with a shriek of collapsing metal.

He wakes up by the powder lakes.

He's gasping for air, shaking, looking around for signs of danger, but there are none. It was just a dream. That was all. Just a dream.

 _But,_ part of him thinks, _it felt so **real**._


	2. repeat

The deja vu kicks in almost immediately.

He's standing on the edge of the powder lakes. He hears them coming. He throws himself into his car. He fangs it. He tries to get away, but they catch up. Something explodes. His car flips.

He wakes up on the edge of the powder lakes. And this time, he doesn't know  _what_ to think.

When he hears the engines again, he panics. He fangs it, he drives her faster and harder than he's ever driven her before. He drives a different direction than he remembers driving before. He ends up losing control of the car and crashing.

He wakes up on the edge of the powder lakes.

It happens  _again_ , and he's  _screaming_ as he tries to drive away. He tries, he  _tries,_  but this time the explosion hits the front of his car. He's gone in a heartbeat.

He wakes up on the edge of the powder lakes.

This time, when they come for him, he's quiet. Frantically focused on trying to figure out what he did last time, what he can do differently. He drives a different direction. He hears the explosion. He feels his car flip.

And he's not sure how, he'll never really be sure how, but this time the car lands, stills, and he's still alive. He crawls out of the car, spitting blood, and is captured immediately.

But, somehow, he's alive.


	3. repeat

They drag him back to their fortress. They hold him down, shave him, etch words into his back. When the brand comes out, he's had enough. He manages to get free, only barely, and he runs. _  
_

The ghosts are nipping at his heels, screaming, clawing at his brain. His mind is already scrambled by the times he's woken up (did any of that really happen? Was it real?). The tunnel walls close in on him. He runs. He runs.

He stops, in bright light and fresh air. He sees towering walls, a sudden drop, a hook swinging through the air, and green. He sees  _green._

He hears the white-painted boys coming for him.

He can't turn around. All he can do is move forward. He backs up, charges. Jumps.

Misses.

He wakes up by the powder lakes.

He spends that morning pacing the sand, struggling to breathe, struggling to come to grips with  _what is happening to him._ Either this is real, or he's gone madder than he already is. The only certainty he has is that whatever this is-- _if_ it's happening to him--happens when he dies.

_So, I survive. Exactly what I was doing already. Just different stakes this time. All right._

They come for him. He drives. Crashes. Is captured. Escapes again. This time, he tries to keep track of where he's going, but it's a maze in there, and the ghosts are still screaming, and somehow he ends up in the same place. He has no choice. He jumps again.

He misses again.

First thing he does when he wakes up is picks up his canteen and throws it as hard as he can. Screams and swears until his throat is hoarse.

He does it all again. Drives. Crashes. Is captured. Escapes. Runs. Jumps.

When the chain around his wrists catches the hook, he nearly sobs with relief.

But in the end, it doesn't matter, because they grab him and drag him back.

 


	4. repeat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for mentions of suicide and torture in this chapter. I'll be updating the tags as the fic goes, but I'll also be putting warnings up here just in case I forget. Because I probably will. Whoops.

They keep him in a cage. They take his blood, almost every day, funneling it from him to the white-painted skeleton boys that come and go regularly. Dying, all of them. He struggles and spits and snaps until they put a muzzle on him. It's metal; it presses into his face, wears at his skin, wears at his  _sanity._

He tries to escape. Repeatedly. Any time he's given an inch, he takes it and runs, as far as his feet and shaking legs will carry him. They always catch him. He doesn't know this place like they do; it's all twisting tunnels and dead ends and sudden drops into  _fucking_ nowhere. They corner him, they catch him. They can't do  _too_ much too him--the man in the apron that they call Organic Mechanic insists that he's valuable, universal donor, don't damage the goods. But so long as his blood isn't spilled, they can beat him and shock him as much as they want. And they do.

Every time

And when they don't catch him, something  _else_ happens. Something that sets everything back and makes him re-live it all over again.

He runs, takes a wrong turn, and takes a tumble off a balcony. He wakes up by the powder lakes.

He tries to fight one, someone in the struggle gets careless, and next thing he knows, he's bleeding out on the floor. He wakes up by the powder lakes.

He pisses off the wrong skeleton, ends up with a cattle prod set to full voltage shoved into his neck, leaving him twitching and seizing on the floor. He wakes up by the powder lakes.

He spends so much time locked in that cage, hung upside down, with the metal pressing into his face and the ghosts screaming that next time he manages to get out, he deliberately takes that turn, jumps. He wakes up by the powder lakes.

He begs and pleads and bargains and bashes his head against the bars, again and again, until everything fades out and it's too late for them to stop him.

And he wakes up by the  _fucking powder lakes._

He starts to wonder if this is punishment. Divine retribution for all the shit he'd done. The people he'd left. The people he'd killed. Johnny the Boy and Jessie and Sprog and Glory, all finally getting their revenge. He tries the loop again, and ends up getting shot.

He doesn't see an end to it.

So he gives up. He wakes up by the powder lakes. Drives. Crashes. Gets captured. Gets marked. Tries to escape (because no matter how many times he's done this, he can't stop himself on that first escape, even if it never works, he tries and tries and tries). Fails.

He lets them put him in the cage. Gives himself one night to scream until his throat feels like it's bleeding.

Then, after that, he is silent.

 


	5. repeat

One day, he hears drums. It's something new, and that alone catches his attention. His head is swimming from blood loss and from being held upside-down, but he can make out snatches of conversation.

_Treason! Betrayal! An imperator gone rogue!_

Whatever that means, it has the skeletons--the War Boys--whipped up into a frenzy. Even the one Max is hooked up to wants to go. He argues with another one, their voices only just audible above the rest of the noise.

 _We take my blood  bag!_ screams the War Boy.  _We take my blood bag, we hook him to the lancer's perch!_

 _This is it,_ Max thinks,  _I'm going to be seeing the lakes again._ Because there's no way he'd survive. Not if they went ahead with it.

And of course, they do, because his luck has been utter shit lately.

They drive, hard and fast through dust and fire. Most of the trip is a blur of terror. Dying was bad enough before. Dying  _now_ would mean the powder lakes,  _again_ , and he knows that one day waking up there will break him. He doesn't want to find out how many times it will take.  _Don't get me killed_ , is his only rational thought,  _don't you fucking dare get me killed._

The War Boys aren't mind readers. That becomes very clear when they decide driving directly into the sand storm is a  _good plan._

When the lizard-faced fucker tries to cut off his head, Max lashes out with more frantic energy than he's ever had in a fight. Kicks him again and again until he's not a threat. Now, it's just him and the storm. He clings to the car with everything he has, sure that any second now he'll feel pain and wake up by the powder lakes. Some frantic part of him thinks it'd be a blessing, because at least he wouldn't be  _here_. They keep driving, even as everything around them falls apart, and they catch up to the truck they'd been chasing.

The War Boy is moving around frantically in the car; Max can barely see what's happening. When the War Boy turns around, he screams something: " _WITNESS ME, BLOOD BAG!_   _ **WITNESS!**_ "

 _What?_ he thinks.

The car goes up in flames. He wakes up by the powder lakes.

He screams and swears and punches his car hard enough to break skin, because  _fuck_ that  _fucking war boy_ and his  _fucking death wish._

Because he knows. He'll have to do it again.

Drive. Crash. Capture. Escape. Fail. Torture. Torture. Torture.

Then comes the chase, again.

He's no less afraid this time; knowing what's coming doesn't  help. This time around, when they drive up next to the Rig, he tries to see who's driving. He might as well know who they're risking his life to catch. There's a woman, with cropped hair and piercing eyes and a face that feels familiar. A Road Warrior. Like him.

Their eyes meet, just for a second, before he looks away.

This time, when the lizard-faced one tries to cut off his head, he kicks his face in out of pure spite.

And this time, when the other one screams for him to Witness, Max knows what to do.

He punches and claws at the window, throws himself into the car when the roof gets ripped off. When he grabs the flare, there's a moment of pure relief.

Then the car gets rammed.

He thinks, before his body is thrown from it,  _Fuck. Fuck. I won't be able to fix that. **How** can I fix that? Is there something I'm supposed to do earlier? What do I do?_

_What do I do?_

When he opens his eyes again, he thinks he'll see the powder lakes. But he doesn't.

He's covered in sand and the ghosts are screaming again, but he's not by the powder lakes. He's in the desert. Alive.

Moving forward.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like to call this chapter "Nux fucks up everything again".


	6. repeat

He finds the rig. The woman was there, along with five others he hadn't seen. He distantly remembers one of the War Boys yelling something about  _prize breeders;_ these must be them.

More importantly, they have water.

He drinks, for what feels like the first time since this entire mess started (no matter how many times he goes through this, he never gets water). He wants the chain off, and they have bolt cutters, but when the white-haired one comes over to cut the chain, suddenly...

Suddenly  _everything_ goes wrong.

The woman throws herself into him. Tries to shoot him with his own broken shotgun. His world devolves into a haze of action and reaction. Scramble. Grapple. Dragged back. Blocking, striking,  _fuck, I have to get untangled, fuck._ Tripping...when the fuck did the War Boy wake up?  _Oh fuck, a gun..._

Shot going off next to his ear.

Their eyes meet again when he gets the upper hand.  _She'll kill me,_ he realizes. She'd damn near done it already and the second he blinks too long or hesitates again...she'll kill him. _  
_

He knew. He knew that look.

He's dragged back again. 

Grappling, pinning,  _I have to I have to_ , struggling to keep the upper hand,  _I have to_ , and when the War Boy holds out the clip, he slams the gun down.

Aims the gun and pulls the trigger.

He hears screaming, distantly. Smells blood. Suddenly finds himself staring at a corpse. _  
_

He wakes up by the powder lakes and he isn't sure why.

Every other time, he's ended up back here because he died. Now...he was  _fine_ before, unless one of those girls had a gun and he just didn't notice. But he didn't remember pain.

His death hadn't re-set it. Hers had.

Now he'd have to live it all again, but this time, he couldn't kill her. For whatever reason, that fearsome-eyed woman had to lvie.

So he does it all again.

The chase is still harrowing the third time around. Despite the fear clawing at his throat, he risks looking at her--that strange woman--again. Longer, this time. She looks just as surprised to see him as she did the last time around. He searches her face for any sign of why she's so important. Can't find anything.

Doesn't matter. If not killing her is what keeps him moving forward, he'll do it.

Even though, again, she looks damn ready to kill  _him_ when they fight the second time around. 

Part of him still wants to do it, because she wants to kill him, because she  _will_ kill him the second he lets her go, he's sure. But at the same time, it's a relief when he puts three bullets in the sand next to her head, instead of into her.

At first he thinks she mattered so much because she knows how to get the rig started. Then she asks him if he wants to get that thing off his face. She watches him tear apart the rig for weapons with wariness in her eyes, but not the hatred he expected. 

She tells him, in the canyon,  _I might need  you to drive the rig,_ when less than half an hour ago he'd shot right next to her head.

(When, in another version of this, he'd shot her  _in_ the head.)

She asks him his name, something no one had asked in so long he's forgotten how the question sounds.

He watches as she gives him the sequence, and feels a twist in his stomach. Guilt.

And, deep down, the feeling that maybe the past repeat had been worth it.


	7. repeat

The situation in the canyon becomes SNAFU, fast. He drives. Fighting alongside the woman makes sense; even he, unused to fighting alongside other people, finds himself working with her easily. She's relentless. A storm.

Unfortunately, so are the people following them.

Next thing he knows, his hand is pinned to the door by the steering wheel. He's blinded by the pain, struggling to get it free. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees one of them--the pregnant one, the blond, the one whose name the white-haired one whispered as she approached ( _Angharad_ )--crawl onto the Rig with the boltcutters. She frees his hand. But  now they don't have a steering wheel.

And there are rocks ahead.

The woman attaches a wrench and they try, they  _try_ to turn the truck. But it clips the side. He leans out the window, suddenly terrified, because she'd been  _right there_ , where the rocks had hit, and...

She's still there when he looks.

His heart skips a beat with relief. He shoots her a thumbs-up:  _Good job. You did good._ She has guts, definitely. He turns his attention back to the road, takes his eyes off her for a second...

He hears the girls screaming, and when he looks again, he sees her falling.

There's dust and screeching tires and the car chasing them flips. Above all that, there's  _screaming:_  the girls, all in a terrified chorus,  _Angharad,_   _ **Angharad**_. He thinks of her, standing proud on the edge of the car, staring him down back in the dust, grabbing the chain and pulling him off the woman. And when he sees the look on the woman's face--wide eyed, panicked,  _terrified--_ he slams down on the brakes. Throws himself out of the car, turns back,  _runs._

He hears yelling, and looks away from that crumpled form just in time to see the barrel of a gun.

He wakes up by the powder lakes with a nauseous feeling in his stomach.

He'll have to do it all again. He knows. He spends his time in the blood bag cage thinking of what happened up to that moment. How he can prevent it. So much is out of his hands; he can't see a way out. The only thing he can think is that maybe,  _maybe_  the shots he'll fire to keep her away from the Rig injured her enough that it made her slip. So he tries to be more careful this time, despite his shaking hands, and doesn't hit her. He negotiates with the woman ( _Furiosa_ , he learned her name this time, from the War Boy screaming about treason and betrayal), again. They drive into the canyon, again. Things go wrong, again.

His hand gets pinned, again. 

She frees it, again, and he's afraid to take his eyes off her. But he has to look away, because he couldn't remember if there are more rocks in the way. In that split second, he hears screams, again.

Turns around in time to see her fall,  _again._

This time, he manages to get the Rig turned around. But that takes too long. By the time he's got it heading back to her, their pursuers on their feet, also running for her body. The big one has a bigger gun, and there's no dodging bullets. Not in real life.

He wakes up by the powder lakes.

He can't think of _anything_ to fix this, no matter how long he contemplates it. And he spends every damn second he can in that cage, in between blood draining and beatings, trying to figure it out. The thought occurs to him, as he stares her down after the storm: does she even survive the fall? Had he been trying to save a corpse all this time?

_Is there any point?_

He keeps thinking it, even as he holds her at gunpoint (because he might be trusting Furiosa now, but she still barely trusts him, he's seen her before but she's meeting him for the first time again and again).  _There's no point. There's no_   _ **point.**_ How could anyone survive a fall like that? For all he knew, she'd been run over.

But when the time comes--when they miss those rocks, but she falls off--he gives the wrench to Furiosa and jumps out of the car anyway. Because he has to know. He has to  _know._

By some miracle, he reaches her body first. She's breathing still, but barely. An awful, shuddering, moaning noise. Body twisted, broken. Wouldn't last much longer.

 _She went under the wheels._  

Again, when he looks up, he sees the barrel of a gun.

He wakes up by the powder lakes.

This time, when he reaches the Canyon again--when she falls--he keeps driving.

"Turn the rig around!" the red-haired one screams. "Go back for her!  _Tell him to turn the Rig around!_ "

"Did you see it?" Furiosa asks.

"She went under the wheels," he says.

" _Did you see it?_ "

He did. He's seen it three times.

He looks her in the eyes, and says it again, with a certainty he wishes he didn't have: "She went under the wheels."

The girls sob and scream. Furiosa's eyes are full of pain, but she does not cry.

Neither does he, though part of him wants to.

 


	8. interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, story time. I was working on this chapter for about an hour in AO3, and then suddenly I accidentally exited out of my web browser and lost _everything_. So that sucked. I also realized that what I had started writing was kind of lengthy and a bit unconnected anyway, so this bit is the first half of that original chapter, reconstructed as best as I could remember writing it the first time around. The second half will be its own chapter (and will also be really sad, fair warning, it'll probably be the darkest chapter to date). Lesson learned: _always type your fic in a word document first._ Learn from my mistakes, friends.

They drive.

The bog slows down the attack party behind them, except the man in the butchered Valiant. That one Max goes back to deal with himself. It’s tough, and afterwards the redhead named Capable has to stitch up a gash on his face. But it’s dealt with. They’re still moving forward.

They drive, and he sleeps, eventually. Wakes up with the ghosts screaming and clawing at him. He raises his fists, but there’s nothing. Just the girls in the back. Just Furiosa, who tells him to sleep. She’s calm, despite his wildness. As if she’s seen this sort of thing before.

As if she’s experienced it herself.

Perhaps it’s that thought that makes him ask how he knows the Green Place exists. He’s heard of too many safe places and paradises that weren’t real to fall for it again. He’d think she’d be the same. But she says she was born there, stolen when she was a child. His gut twists at the words, because he knows what it’s like to lose home.

“You’ve done this before?” he asks.

“Many times,” she says. He almost laughs, because so has he, but there’s no way to tell her that without sounding mad. Madder than she must already think him.

The girls are looking for hope, she says. And when he asks, she says she’s looking for redemption.

His gut twists, again, because he knows what that feels like, too.

They drive. Eventually, they see something in the distance. _Bait_ , he says, but Furiosa seems to know it. Gets out of the car to approach it. Speaks:

_I am one of the Vulvalini of the Many Mothers. My initiate mother was K.T. Concannon. I am the daughter of Mary Jobassa. My clan was Swaddle Dog._

And with that, the woman in the tower—the Bait—knows her.

Other women appear from the dunes, women on bikes. And they seem to know her, too.

The others start to get out of the rig. Max leans out, long enough to make sure it’s safe. Furiosa speaks— _they’re reliable_ —and the other women relax. He gets back in the car once they do. It’s not his place out there. Never was. He can’t quite hear what’s happening (not from this distance, and not with his ear still ringing from when Furiosa used him as a tripod). But he sees the excitement on Furiosa’s face as she speaks to them.

Sees that excitement turn to confusion as one of the other women says something.

Just barely hears the blond-haired one, the Dag, say something about _the crows, that creepy place with all the crows_.

Sees the confusion turn to something blank and lifeless.

And he knows, then. He knows. The Green Place is gone. Everything is gone.

He watches her walk away from them, off into the sand. Watches he collapse. Hears her scream. For a moment, he thinks of getting out of the car. Going to her. Comforting her.

Because he knows what it is to lose everything, too.

But he stays in the car until she comes back. Because he doesn’t know what to say to make this easier. Because he knows, deep down, that nothing he says to her will make this easier.

Nothing ever made it easier for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also, BIG thank you to everyone who wrote comments on this fic. I haven't had the time to reply to them yet, but I've read every one and I really appreciate them. Y'all rock. :3


	9. repeat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here's the second half of the chapter I tragically lost to my own stupidity. Fair warning, again, this is the darkest chapter of the fic so far. A lot of character death. Mistakes are made. I'm so sorry.

“Can I talk to you?”

He’s sitting apart from the others when she approaches him, watching for any threats. Nothing, so far, but he didn’t feel like sleeping, either. He stands, follows when she walks to the end of the Rig. Stays just behind her. She speaks of trying to go across the Salt, that they figure they have enough supplies for 160 days. That one of the bikes is his, fully loaded.

“You’re more than welcome to come with us,” she says.

He doesn’t know what to say. So he takes a second to weigh his options.

His car is gone. No getting that back, unless the War Boys who stole it wreck it and he happens to stumble across what’s left of her. He has the bike now, sure, and supplies. He can go wherever he wants. Behind him is the War Parties. To either side, more Wasteland, more of what he’d already been dealing with before all of this started. Forward…

He was never one for groups. Always ended badly. But something in him said he had to stay. That this, whatever _this_ was that kept him chained to the powder lakes, wasn’t over. That maybe he would find the answer out there.

With her.

When he looks at her again, he realizes she’s glancing his way. Not quite making eye contact; just trying to gauge where his head is at. It hits him that he’s done the same thing, and he almost laughs at the realization. _God._ God. How many times is he going to look at this woman and see some of himself?

Does she feel the same way? Is that why she was asking him to come with them?

People had asked him to come with them before. He’d always refused. But now…

“…when do we leave?”

She looks startled that he’s agreed. But he thinks, for a second, he sees her smile. That wipes away some of his inhibitions.

At first.

They start riding the next morning, leaving behind the emptied out War Rig. It’s a long, hot day that turns into a cold night. They stop. They rest. They wake up. They ride again. Repeat for the next day.

And the day after that.

It takes ten days for them to find some feature in the Salt—a wreckage, what might’ve been a boat once. They rest there for the night. That’s when he first starts to hear concerned whispers, discussion of whether they’re anything out there. He’s been thinking the same since day three, but he keeps it to himself.

Wake up. Ride until dark. Sleep. Repeat.

There’s talk of turning back, eventually, talk that turns to arguments. There’s nothing for us out here. There’s nothing for us back **there**. We’ve come this far, there’s no sense in turning back. You don’t know that. No, **you** don’t know that. He stays out of it. Starts making a map of what they’ve seen and where they’ve been, so far. It’s a featureless cloth with a single dotted line and two, maybe three landmarks.

That’s all.

Wake up. Ride until dark. Sleep. Repeat.

The War Boy’s breathing turns rough at some point. He’s gone not long after that. They all saw it coming—he was ill, a kid at the end of his half life. Doesn’t make burying him any easier.

What they don’t see coming is one of the Vulvalini dying before they’ve run out of supplies. Then another. They stop for three days in the shelter of some other structure, trying to take stock. Trying to see if turning back is possible. They’re not sure it is, but they try.

The guzz runs out first.

Then the water.

No one’s keeping track of days then. The ghosts start showing up during the day, nipping at his heels, clawing at his brain. His feet are heavy. His tongue is dry. _I’m dying_ , he thinks, and it’s a realization, not an idle thought. _I’m dying._

He collapses not long after.

He wakes up by the powder lakes.

He lives it all again. He spends every quiet moment he has trying to figure out how to make it right. When Furiosa tells him he’s more than welcome to come with them, he agrees, but suggests a direction this time.

They ride. They rest. They ride. They rest. They ride. The War Boy passes first, again. The terrain this way is rougher; eventually, someone’s bike can’t handle the strain. He hears the crash behind him; next thing he knows, he’s trying to bandage someone’s head wound. It’s one of the Vulvalini who has a head wound; the girl riding with her, Dag, has a broken leg. Ugly bruising. There’s too much blood. Only so many medical supplies.

The Vulvalini woman doesn’t last the week.

They run out of guzz, again. Water next. He has to carry Dag on his back. Her voice mingles with the ones echoing in his skull. Prayers, he thinks sometimes. Sometimes in a tongue he can’t understand. He hates the sound. Hates the thought that it will _stop_ even more.

One of the girls (he can’t tell who anymore), stumbles, falls. Furiosa goes back for her, picks her up, keeps going. He wants to say she’s gone, not breathing, but he’s too tired to speak. Knows it won’t matter anyway.

They walk until they can’t. Stop to rest. He’s able to put Dag down before his legs give out. Lays there, praying the night comes and stops the heats. Drifts off.

He wakes up by the powder lakes.

He doesn’t know what to do.

He lives through it all again. Every second of pain, every fight, every word exchanged. He spends the night before she comes to talk to him mapping the Salt, as he remembers it. Trying to find the right way.

They ride. They rest. They ride. They rest. The supplies begin to run low.

Everything starts to go wrong.

He’s next to die after Nux this time. The side effect of trying to keep the others alive with his share of the rations. He feels himself growing weak, but he keeps giving, trying to change the outcome. He falls asleep one night. He wakes up by the salt lakes with panic settling into the core of him.

He tries again. They turn around after eighty days. Get lost in the featureless plains. He’s fifth to die, after Nux and three of the Vulvalini (Keeper, Maddie, Jane, he learns more of their names with each pass). He wakes up by the powder lakes.

He tries again. They keep pushing on. Everyone tells stories every night as they huddle together for warmth. He listens to tales and ghost stories he’s never heard before. When Nux passes, they pile stones over his body (the ground is too hard, he tries and only hurts his hands on the shovel). They ride. The supplies run out. He watches most of the Vulvalini and one of the girls die before his own body gives out. He wakes up by the powder lakes.

He tries again. They stick to the edge of the Salt. It’s more difficult going; there are cliffs, and there are more people. Scavengers harass them for days. The one named Valkyrie is the first to go this time, shot. At least this one, Nux gets his glorious death (bleeding out under Max’s hand from a knife, the blood of the man who’d tried to attack them in the night still on his hands, smile on those scarred lips). One day, when he hears motors, he thinks at first it’s another hallucination. When he turns around, it’s not. There are scavenges, and one of the girls is lying on the ground. Not moving. He runs towards her. He wakes up by the powder lakes.

He tries again. Suggests a different direction. Lays awake at night and listens to their stories, some old, some new. The girls open up about themselves. This loop, he learns that Toast and Dag are nicknames, though neither girl gives up their real name (Dag mumbles something about names and power into Cheedo’s hair as she speaks). He learns that Nux got _his_ name after he clung to the side of the lift the whole way up as a kid ( _tough nut to crack_ , he says proudly). He learns that Capable plays the guitar, and that Cheedo knows more songs from Before. Songs even Max recognizes ( _there’s a lady who’s sure all that glitters is gold…_ ). He hears Furiosa tell Nux how she lost her arm as he falls into an awful, wheezing coughing fit, body trembling from the effort of living. Nux is first to go, again, with the others dropping off as supplies run out and they’re left in the heat. He wakes up by the powder lakes.

He tries again. They push on. The Salt is so vast he can’t tell if they’ve gone this direction before or not. Every night, he sleeps on the edge of their huddle, next to Furiosa. Every day, he tries to find a landmark, something to tell him where they are or where they’re going, but there’s nothing. Just like before. And the time before that. “What’s the point?” he says one night, sure that no one is listening. He feels Furiosa stir beside him. Sees her point to the girls huddled in the middle. _Hope._ He has to watch that hope get extinguished, one by one, before he can’t walk anymore. He wakes up by the powder lakes.

He tries again. This time, in whatever direction they picked, a storm picks up. Next thing he knows, he’s lost. He screams their names, again and again, hears shouts in response ( _over here, where are you_ ) but their shouts mingle with the screams in his head and the howling of the wind and when it stops, he’s alone. Lost. He walks, walks for days, until one day he lays down and doesn’t get up. He wakes up by the powder lakes.

He tries again. They keep going. He wishes he could say burying Nux is easier after so many times. It’s not. He wishes he could say watching the others slowly start go is easier. It’s not. It’s worse. They keep dying in different orders. He has no idea who to brace himself for. And when this time, Furiosa gets an injury that becomes infected…when she gets sick…when he finds himself holding her hand as a fever sweeps through her and gently telling her she’s going to be fine ( _lying_ to her)…when she weakly pulls him down and tells him to get them somewhere safe…

When he wakes up by the powder lakes, he still has tears in his eyes.

He lives through it all again. He tries to think of a way out, but he can’t. It’s exhausting. By this point, he fights in perfect sync with Furiosa in the canyon. He can drive away from Angharad with dry eyes (but a no less heavy heart). He can make it through the Bog with all the right traps laid to set back his enemies further. Kill the Bullet Farmer without any harm done to himself ( _it’s not his blood_ ). He asks her the same questions—for luck, perhaps, or perhaps as some quiet way of letting her know that someone does care about her pain. That someone understands.

As he watches her scream on that sand dune, he wonders—dully, wearily—if there’s anything he can do.

Because he’s filled in all the blank spaces of the Salt. Time and time again. As he sits apart from everyone else and makes the latest variation of his map, he knows, there’s nothing out there. There’s _nothing._

But there’s nothing he can think to say that will stop them.

_There’s nothing for them out there._

_There’s nothing for **me** out there._

So when she comes to him—when she says he’s more than welcome to come with them—he can’t do it.

“No, I’ll make my own way.”

Her disappointment twists like a knife. So does the acceptance in her eyes—like she’d seen that coming. It makes the surprise he saw in her eyes the last times more painful. She starts to walk away. He needs to say something to her. Anything. If he could tell her what he’d seen what he’d been through…no, she’d never believe it. Never. But he has to say _something_ …

“You know, hope is a mistake?”

She turns around. And he has to look away. “If you can’t fix what’s broken, you’ll, uhm…” His heart his heavy, and he’s tired, and he doesn’t know what to do. “You’ll go insane.”

He doesn’t know what to do.

So he watches them leave the next day.

 _You should’ve tried to stop them,_ he thinks. _Tried to say anything. You know what’s out there for them. They’ll die. All of them._ All the people he’d come to know, in every loop, in those 160 days played again and again…

They’re going to die out there.

And then what?

_where are you, max?_

He turns around. Nothing.

_where are you?_

_you promised to help us_

Next thing he knows, he’s staring down at Her.

The littlest ghost.

His hand pressed against his forehead, body shaking, eyes wide and confused.

Then she’s gone again, leaving him standing there. Heart still racing.

Mind racing faster.

_Wouldn’t you do anything you could if you had the chance to save her? Haven’t you thought that? You have the chance, you know the score, you can save them when you couldn’t save her…_

But how?

_come on, pa. let’s **go.**_

She’s standing in the trail they left behind. His hand fumbles at his belt, gripping a scrap of cloth attached to it, trying to find something solid to hold onto. His thumb rubs against the weave of it, against some stiff stain. When he glances down at what he’s holding, he sees a skull inked in blood.

Just like that, he knows.

He fangs it after them. Catches up. Stops in front of her, shows her the map.

“This is your way home.”

The others slowly begin to latch onto the idea. Tossing around suggestions. With every word spoken, the idea—that insane, half-formed idea he’d pulled together on the ride there—seems more plausible. She doesn’t look convinced. She looks tired, still. As tired as he remembers seeing her every time they started this journey. As tired as he feels.

But something in him feels…less heavy. Like maybe this is the right way to go. Like…

“Feels like hope,” says Nux.

_Like that._

He turns to her. Speaks softly. “Look. It’ll be a hard day.” It had been a thousand hard days, perhaps more, but he wants to believe that this will be the last one. “But I guarantee you that 160 days ride that way? There’s nothing but salt.” He says that with conviction. Because he’s seen it, even if he can’t tell her. “At least that way, you know, we might be able to… _together_ …”

Because leaving her was a mistake, he knows now. But this wasn’t.

“…come across some kind of redemption.”

He looks at her. Holds out his hand.

She takes it. And that’s when he knows he’s doing the right thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I accidentally end up writing "Max/Furiosa if you squint" because I swear that wasn't on purpose, it just HAPPENS with these two.
> 
> Also I might've contemplated a loop where Max just up and leaves and lives his entire life start to finish and then wakes up by the powder lakes but cut it because a) too long and b) too cruel.


	10. continue

Of course the first pursuing vehicle he has to see that day is his. As if it wasn’t bad enough he’s been through her wreck so many times he’s lost count. Now he gets to see the outcome, again, but this hunting him down.

Things don’t improve from there. Engine one gives out. Cars with ploughs latch onto the rig, start holding them down. He’s able to cut the chains, but that problem is replaced by the men on poles. Fucking poles.

This sort of thing doesn’t shock him anymore. It just pisses him off.

It’s a scramble now, up close and personal fighting. People with machetes, people with saws. He can’t die, not now, not when he’s come this far, not when dying means he’ll have to start all over again…

Suddenly, she’s there, flinging her hand out towards him. His hand flies to his face to block that ethereal blow, instinctive, the way it had happened out by the Salt, except _this time—_

Flung back, head ringing, hand in _pain_ , pinned to his head, a bolt? A bolt. There had been a bolt, his hand is keeping it from entering his brain. Alive. He’s alive.

He distantly hears screaming. Screaming and…

_hey_

_stay with me_

_st_ ”ay with me. Hey. Are you there?”

He is.

_Oh, god. Furiosa._

He doesn’t stop to think, because there’s no time. They’re going after Furiosa and there’s _no time._ He pulls his hand free. Runs. Throws himself forward. The attacker on the front of the Rig is dislodged, but now he’s hanging onto the hood for dear life and there’s another one coming…

Another one _going_ , as she slams on the breaks, dislodging them.

Max meets her eyes through the windshield. She’s wide-eyed, a bit frantic, that frantic edge softening when she sees he’s all right. _Why?_ he wants to ask. _You can’t stop, you can’t stop for anything, you can’t stop for **me**_ **…**

But there’s no time, as another one comes from the top of the rig. He’s able to throw that one into the path of another’s saw, but then he’s falling, _falling, fuck, no, not again, not again…_

Someone grabs him. _She_ grabs him.

All he can do is hang there, watching the ground race past, too terrified to even scream, trusting that she’ll keep him from going under the wheels (like Angharad, he thinks frantically). Suddenly, she _screams_ , not a sound of rage or a release of energy from holding him up but a sound of…

And when he’s able to look up, her eyes are full of it ( _no, no_ ). He feels himself slipping, and something must be wrong, he knows something is wrong, but he’s just hanging there and there’s nothing he can do…

Nothing he can do as the other cars close in. As his own car closes in. As they’re boxed in, squeezing her between another rig. As he watches his car go up in a fireball, some distant part of him knows he’s next. He’ll be joining her soon. By the powder lakes. Again.

“ _Oi…!_ ”

He glances behind him. Nux. It only takes him a second to work out the War Boy’s intention. Another second to brace himself for it. A nudge is all it takes, and he’s falling in a different direction. Then clinging to the front of the other rig.

_Nux, you fucking beautiful creature._

He has backup in the Vulvalini, so getting onto the Rig isn’t as hard as he’d feared. Once the driver is gone, it’s just the fuck with the fake nose, and _he’s_ no use in a fight. The rig is on fire, spitting heat and smoke. He can use that. Yeah. Pull up in front of the butchered caddilac and… _smokescreen_ , thinks part of him that’s frantic enough to try and crack a joke. The War Rig is able to use that cover to get out, to pull up beside him, and as it does…

“ _She’s hurt! She’s hurt real bad!_ ”

When he meets her eyes, they’re full of pain again. Pain, and an acceptance of it that terrifies him to the core. Like a dog about to slink off under the porch and die in peace.

No, he won’t let that happen. He has to get to her and he has to get to her _now._ So he throws himself from the exploding rig with one thought in his mind: _I have to get to her. I have to._

That’s the only thought in his head when one of the men on poles grabs him from the War Rig. That’s the only thought in his head when he dislodges the man and finds himself swaying back and forth, back and forth, before he finally ends up on the rig covered in speakers. And when he gets to the front of that rig and sees her climbing across the War Rig, trying to get to Immortan Joe…

_I have to get to her. I have to. I have to. I **have to.**_

It’s not about survival anymore. Getting to her is the only thing that matters. If it were about survival, he wouldn’t be fighting a man with a guitar. If it were about survival, he _definitely_ throwing something at a man twice his size. But he is. Because she has to be all right. He has to get to her, and she _has to be all right._

He finally beats the man into submission and scrambles onto the Cadillac in time to see her slip. There’s a heavy smell of blood as he drags her back onto the car. But not all of it is hers.

_He’s dead!_ he hears Cheedo scream back to the War Rig. _He’s **dead!**_

Immortan Joe is dead, but it wasn’t over.

Because she’s hurt, bad, like Cheedo had said. Trembling in his arms as the others start to come over. He’s so focused on her that he almost misses the canyon collapsing behind them. Almost misses how many people _aren’t_ there. That Nux isn’t there.

_At least he got his glorious death,_ he thinks. And, _I wish I hadn’t hit him. In at least one of the loops._

The canyon is collapsed behind them. They’ve won this fight. But it’s not over yet, because she isn’t okay.

He tries to make her comfortable, but her breathing grows more and more labored. He hears one of the Vuvalini talk about air in her chest, collapsing her lungs. Pnenumothorax. He remembers. He dreges up some long ago memory and he remembers what to do.

“I am so sorry…”

It’s helping her. He knows. But driving the knife into her side feels like killing her again. He distracts himself by mumbling instructions to the Vulvalini. She has to be okay, they have to make sure she’s okay…

Her breathing levels out. Her eyes focus on him. “Hey…” he hears himself say. “Hey…”

She breathes something. A word. He has to gently pull her closer to him to hear. “…get them… _home…_ ”

Suddenly, he’s back in the Salt, holding her while she bleeds out. _Get them safe. Get them home._ No. No, no, no, not again. Not this again. _I can’t lose you again. I can’t._

Her skin is cold and pale. He doesn’t need the Vulvalini woman to tell him that she’s lost too much blood. He knows. And he knows that he’s got plenty, running through his veins, high-octane, universal donor. Universal donor. He doesn’t hesitate. His hands fly for the tubing, the needles, those damn things he’d kept on a _whim_ , because someone might want them for something (if he ever made it out of whatever this was). And he’s never been more grateful for his tendency to hold onto things (every loop, he’d grabbed it in every loop, like he knew this was coming, all along, like he’d known this was going to happen, that she’d need this). The needle should sting as he pushes it into his vein, but he doesn’t notice. The sight of the blood running through the tube should make him sick (should bring back memories of that cage, of the brand on his neck and the words on his back). But seeing it is a relief.

She has to be all right, and if that means draining every drop he has, he’ll do it. Not because doing otherwise means he wakes up by the powder lakes, again. But because she has to live. Because she matters more than anything has in his life in a long time. Because she has to be okay.

She has to be.

“There you go. Okay.”

His blood is flowing into her. He cradles her head in his hands. Suddenly desperate to say something to her. Something to bring her back. He keeps thinking about that loop in the Salt, and all the ones before, about her giving him the Rig’s kill switch sequence (every time, _every damn time_ ), about her screams in on the sand dunes and the look in her eyes when she said “redemption”. About how he sees so much of himself in her, but believes—unlike when he looks at his own reflection—that she could actually find that. That she _deserves_ that.

She deserves it.

And he realizes, suddenly, that she never learned his name. Every time, she asked him, and every time, he gave the same answer. _Does it matter?_

Suddenly, it does. Suddenly, he wants her to know. More than anything, he wants her to know. If only this once.

“Max,” he whispers. “My name is Max.”

His chest is tight, his hand won’t stop shaking, and he can’t look at her. Not at first. He feels raw, exposed, like someone’s torn him open and exposed all the ugliness inside. But when he looks at her again, it’s all right. Because she’s seen that ugliness before. And she gave him the killswitch anyway.

And, in that second, he knows. Everything is going to be all right.

“That’s my name.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. I noticed that it's actually the POWDER lakes Max is wrecked by, not the salt lakes, so I went back and changed that the other day because it was going to bug me otherwise.
> 
> 2\. The "my name is Max" scene is still the MOST PAINFUL THING


	11. end

His next moment of clarity comes when he’s standing next to her on the platform.

He knows. He isn’t sure how he knows, but he _knows_. This is it. This is the end of it. They’re standing on the platform. About to be raised up. And he’s finally free of the chains dragged him back to the powder lakes. This is it.

It’s over.

 _You’re more than welcome to come with us._ Her words still echo in his ears. He’s sure she’d say the same thing, here and now, about him staying. But…

_I’ll make my own way._

And perhaps he is running, again. Or perhaps he’s simply stepping away, because he’s done his part. They don’t need him anymore. This was what all that pain, those days lived again and again, were leading up to. And it was worth it. He can’t say it wasn’t worth it.

It’s worth it, because as he steps off, he turns back around to see them standing there, tall and proud. He sees her scanning the crowd, confused. Their eyes meet. Even with that distance.

She smiles, not sad like she had by the Salt, but with understanding. Reassurance. Nods at him. _We’ll be okay._

He nods back.

_So will I._

It’s over now. It’s okay.

They’re all free.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would just like to take a second to thank everyone who read this and left comments, primarybufferpanel and bonehandledknife for being the primary enablers in regards to this idea, everyone else who contributed to that original thread for also being enablers, and my friend just-a-storyteller on tumblr for telling me I'm a terrible person after chapter nine. xD
> 
> Will there be more Mad Max fic in the future? Probably. Yes. I'm weak. So very, very weak.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the Three Days Grace song of the same name.


End file.
